According to the estimates of World Health Organization (WHO),about 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability.While other studies by the British Council in 2017 and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) in 2011, have stated that the population of Persons with Disabilities in Pakistan, is estimated to be around 12% and the prevalence-rate of severe disabilities in the country is around 2 percent.
These figures reflect that a significant part of the nation needs special care, enabling them to benefit from basic socio-economic services and banking facilities. In order to create awareness and facilitate the differently-abled consumers, the annual Purple-Tuesday is celebrated by socially-responsible enterprises around the globe. It is a flagship programme focused on enabling businesses to develop products and services for customers and ensure Disability-Inclusion.
Standard Chartered Bank Pakistan Limited (SCBPL) is playing an exemplary role in accelerating socio-economic growth in Pakistan, with a special focus on empowering the deprived segments. Muhammad Umer, CountryHead, Human Resources of this global financial institution in Pakistan,expressed the bank’s commitment to provide more convenient access to services for the differently-abled consumers and employees for promising broader financial-inclusion and empowering them to reach their full potential. Speaking to the media about the bank’s efforts for Disability-Inclusion, he stated:
“The visionary leadership of this innovative banking institution is inspired to make generous contributions, through resourceful initiatives to elevate the quality of life for the consumers with special needs. Some of the initiatives of Standard Chartered Pakistan include initiating a collaboration with ConnectHear (social startup for deaf-inclusion), Sign-Language and Financial-Literacy training, provision of ramps and wheel-chairs at branches, Supplier-Diversity, use of Digital Financial Services and Verizon’s BlueJeans Video-Conferencing App to ease accessibility and flexible-timings, along with other innovative measures and technologies for convenience.
We also believe that further regulatory support is needed to accelerate the empowerment of differently-abled persons in Pakistan. It is the nation’s collective responsibility to facilitate such underserved segments, by providing them with more convenience and socio-economic growth opportunities. We would like to express our gratitude to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for formulating a Financial-Inclusion Policy that highlights the importance of mainstreaming the vast ‘Unbanked’ population, for promising widespread benefits for them all over the country. Hence, Standard Chartered Bank Pakistan is adopting global best-practices and suggesting multiple reforms in this direction.
Being a pioneer in the banking industry, it is our passion to make a difference for these special citizens, while we strive to provide employment opportunities for them and do the right thing for our clients and staff. We have launched nationwide campaigns to create disability-awareness along with accessible banking services, to improve the overall banking experiences for our clients with disabilities. We are also engaging our specially-abled colleagues in innovative learning sessions and sign language programmes, along with skill-development and technical-training to help them perform at par with everyone.
ConnectHear was the winning startup in the Standard Chartered Women-in-Tech (Cohort 2) competition, which is now conducting,sensitivity, inclusion and accessibility workshops,industry- wide. The program teaches basic daily-life vocabulary and work-related terminology to our staff, helping them to interact with customers who are unable to hear.
We have customized recruitment and internship programmes for talented Persons-with-Disabilitiesin partnership with NOWPDP. In addition, we are also endorsing ‘Supplier-Diversity’ by promoting hand-made corporate giveaways, created by differently-abled persons, to recognize their skills. Collaborating with various stakeholders, we have built ramps and provided wheelchairs to improve accessibility and infrastructure at all branches. We also have a Disabilities Learning Pathway, on diSCover (SCBPL’s internal learning platform).
As part of our humanitarian initiatives, Standard Chartered Pakistan has employed 25-visually impaired (VI) personnel and they have been equipped with assistive technology, enabling them to perform at their best. These include Closed-Captioning in meeting platforms, JAWS, on-screen keyboards, and text-narration. Providing them with the “new Ways of Working” (nWOW) we have created an inclusive environment, as we conduct sessions for BlueJeans, an application used at Standard Chartered Pakistan for video/audio webinars. The staff has available options for using text-to-speech and speech-to-text commands, as per their own convenience.
After multiple trainings, our visually impaired and differently-abled staff have acquired the skills to use the accessible version of diSCover, as per regulatory requirements. Now, they are also being familiarized with the diSCover mobile app. During the bank’s annual signature event, Global Learning Week (GLW), special sessions are also conducted on PWDs and Advancing Disability-Inclusion.
This year, we were part of a session on: How we are supporting our colleagues with disabilities? Mike Adams, CEO, Purple-Tuesdayaddressed the audience along with our internal leaders, who are championing the disability confident journey. This insightful forum, inspired our colleagues at every level to make a start towards creating an inclusive experience for people with disabilities. We also conducted an external virtual panelevent on the topic of Advancing Disability-Inclusion in Financial Services and Beyond, enabling theHR fraternity and priority clients to improve the customer-experience of people, to proceed with the disabilities-agenda together. Recently, Standard Chartered Bank in partnership with an international NGO, recorded audio-books for visually-impaired children. This was a rewarding experience for our staff, who took out the time to narrate some stories as a volunteering activity.
This evolving eco-system of financial facilities for the differently-abled persons, still has a long way to go. Whereby, we will continue to enrich and integrate more specialized solutions to enable a bigger and more positive impact on the lives of these special citizens.
